Unless there was an edit I didn’t see, Brandon has the year correct and doesn’t mention WWE at all. ECW: Heat Wave in July 2000 was was when the Van Terminator debuted, and RVD always did it with a chair in ECW. First person to use a garbage can I think was actually Shane.

i’ve seen her on NXT and yes she’s good and a huge improvement over current women’s roster, but let’s slow down a bit on the whole BEAT HER WITH ONE MOVE, when that move was botched and looked more like aj slipped on a banana peel.

happy for change but the title swap looks a little weak when the new champ doesn’t really inflict any damage

Agreed. I love Paige and I know what she can do and she deserves that title and I would never endeavor to take her moment away from her or belittle it in any way. But damn…that match? You’re gonna one hit KO your longest reigning Divas champion in company history to a chick casual fans don’t know on a botched finish? I wasn’t buying it.

Casual fans don’t know who Paige is. There is a feeling out process for a wrestler, and Divas have it tough with their sub-5 minute matches in that that process could take weeks for them. The best way for Paige to have instantly gotten across to that audience was to kill AJ, the same girl who beat her up before the match and was acting shitty, in one move (botched , but AJ sold it to death) with authority.

Agreed. I like Paige a lot, but that Paige Turner looked awful. Whether it was Paige’s fault or AJ’s fault, regardless, that Paige Turner looked about as impactful as gently falling onto a plush mattress.

I think the best thing to do, unless that was just a bad botch, is to modify the move with a longer set-up and make it in to more of a deliberate slam, almost like an Angle Slam. The quick “Twist-of-Fate”-style spin she did last night clearly didn’t look right. Either that or just let her use that crazy submission she busted out for ArRival.

Crosslock wouldn’t have worked for two reasons. 1) that early in a match, AJ shouldn’t be so weak she can’t escape it before it gets locked in 2) Submissions are admittance from the loser that they they aren’t as good as the winner while an impact finisher takes their thoughts out of the equation. It needed to be out of AJ’s hands.

Also on the Not-Wanting-To-Detract-From-Her-Well-Deserved-Moment bandwagon, but I’m very nervous about where they go with Paige.

Between her selling AJ’s slap for, like 27 minutes, and a less than stellar Paige Turner. I’m afraid they’ve already set her up as an in-over-her-head fluke champion who’s going to get tossed around by the established Divas and only win matches by surprise roll ups and luck.

I didn’t get to watch this RAW live, and litterally everybody in the world was raving about paige debuting and beating AJ lee and that made me want to see this more than anything ever!

then, I saw AJ lee giving out the best non-heyman performance on this RAW in her pre-match promo (seriously, she was “cm punk brilliant” in that promo!) only for paige to finish her with one sloppy move (especially when I was so looking forward for the reverse scorpion deathlock or whatever sir william by god regal calls it) and I got to admit… I totally despise it. it’s such a russo thing. (most of this RAW was, but since it put over the guys we love, it’s ok.)

ofcourse, if this means we’re f*cking done with the total divas, it doesn’t matter to me how this started as long as AJ lee gets to showcase her freakin’ awesomeness every week like this and paige gets to live her dream. they have way more second chances, and I hope WWE makes the best of it and give them all the time in the world to create a “really” great match.

I marked out hard for Cesaro saying he was a Paul Heyman Guy. And then again when The Shield’s music hit. Two mark-outs in one Raw is ridiculously unheard of for me. I don’t think I’ve even marked out twice during Raw all year combined.

Thank you Mr. Stroud for introducing me to NXT through your reports which started all those years ago. If I hadn’t been watching it, all the magnificent stuff that happened in the show with the NXT-alumni wouldn’t have been half as awesome as it is (PAIGE DEBUT! PAUL HEYMAN AND CESARO!!! BO DALLAS IS COMING FULL IN BO-LIEVER MODE! THE SHIELD AND DANIEL BRYAN ON THE SAME PAGE AAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

As a Des Moines resident, I feel so bad watching a show like this because I know that when Raw or Smackdown comes to our town, we could NEVER be such a great crowd. Cesaro could be out there giant swinging everyone on the roster, and everyone would just be standing around asking “Where’s the Miz?”

I never get in on this business early enough, but since some people might actually see my comment this week, I’m just going to let it all out:

FUCK STING.

More importantly, fuck all these people who think Sting (especially Crow Sting) showing up on the first show after a Wrestlemania that was basically the changing of the guard (save for Cena/Wyatt, obviously) would be the right thing to do.

Why is it a bad idea?

-He’s 55.
-He hasn’t been in a promotion that the post-Wrestlemania casual fans have seen in nearly 13 years.
-He hasn’t had an actual good match in at least half that long.
-Crow Sting was cool SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO! That’s older than the average age of John Cena’s fanbase, and a literal eternity in wrestling time.

So no, him showing up to point a baseball bat at whoever would’ve just been a waste of time that could’ve been better used by putting Rusev and Barrett in squash matches. It was, and it was far more glorious than an AARP member showing up looking for his fucking senior citizen discount.

Love him or hate him, this makes me think of Warrior’s induction speech where he states that the old guard should know when there time is up and step out of the spotlight to let the next generation shine.

This may be contradictory to his actions when he was still active, but I wish the likes of Sting would take this to heart. I have no desire to watch a 55 year old man shuffle carefully around a wrestling ring.

Cornette cut huge impactful promos in the territories. They were as good as Heyman’s but they’ll never have the longevity since most of that tape is gone for good. Territory Cornette with no one rewriting his promos is as good as anyone has ever been, which doesn’t take anything away from Heyman.

As someone who has never seen Paige before last night, I wasn’t overly impressed. I had heard about her, and was enthused to see someone new show up, but her match with AJ was not a good showcase for either of them. I’m still not sure what her “Paige Turner” move was supposed to be; knocking AJ’s knee out from under her? I had to rewind it a few times to see if it was a botch that AJ just rolled with. If anyone is willing to explain what that move is supposed to do, I’d be grateful for the enlightenment.

That said, new female wrestlers are good, and if they’re not completely helpless eye candy like Eva Marie, even better. I would have liked to have seen a really ferocious match between Paige and AJ, so it fell flat for me. Hopefully they’ll do something longer and more involved next time.

I feel bad for Tamina. She looks lonely out there without Tonto and Tarzan.

You gotta watch her stuff on NXT where she is solid gold. Yeah, the botched Paige Turner sucked, and AJ had to oversell to make it look like she didn’t die from a knee graze, but it’s her first moment on a big stage. Obviously nerve wracking. Didn’t help that they tried to set it up with a really overly complex spot. The rematch will be better, I can 99.9% guarantee it.

I read the description of that, but I’ll have to watch some videos when I get home. A written description of a fairly complex wrestling move doesn’t help visualize it much. Certainly sounds a lot more interesting than what happened last night!

@therick711 – No offense to Paige, but she doesn’t do it nearly as well as Masato Yoshino (which is probably partially due to other divas not willing to bump on the back of their head so hard), and even Yoshino barely ever uses the Lightning Spiral as a finisher these days, preferring the vastly superior Byakuya choke.

I definitely prefer Paige’s submission finishers, those are rad as fuck, but of her “impact” finishers, I prefer the Cradle DDT.

AJ was tremendous last night. Just the best performance she’s given since the Total Divas got offended at her pipe bomb and she wasn’t allowed to be so mean any more.

As sad as I was to see her title reign ended – and I wish that Paige Turner had been a little smoother, and Paige’s meek “I’m just here to congratulate you!” thing been written differently – you know she loved it. She’s been talking about not being able to wait until the NXT women move up to the main roster for over a year now. She finally has some worthy competition.

Even if she disappears to Punk Island for a while, she’ll leave the Diva’s division in much better shape than she found it.

“Even if she disappears to Punk Island for a while, she’ll leave the Diva’s division in much better shape than she found it.”

Just like she promised.

Well, I’m actually a little worried about this. We absolutely need AJ to stick around to help sell actual women’s wrestling to a global audience. Paige is great, but had it been her on RAW and AJ on NXT, Paige would have had to deal with the same garbage AJ did. They are equally good, equally better than most of the chicks on the main roster, and equally superior in their “it” factors that get them across. There need to be two of those (love Emma, Bailey, and Sasha, but none of them have “it” like AJ or Paige), or WWE books toward the overall average rather than the best.

Shouldn’t be a problem though. Our new Trish and Lita (I’m going AJ and Paige respectively) will tear down the house.

I love Paige but saying she’s AJ’s equal is overselling it a bit. Give her time, she’ll definitely get there, but right now AJ is still untouchable. Having said that, Paige is better than AJ was a couple of years ago when she moved up to the main roster. The future is bright.

A bit of one, a bit of the other. Paige is taller which helps her mostly good offense (those elbows and the Paige-Turner have to go) look more believable, AJ is a better speaker (one of the best) and more knowledgeable in the ring.

I totally agree with all of you guys. and other than heyman’s amazing performance, it was my favourite AND least favourite thing of the show. AJ was THEEEEEE BEST, and I’m happy for paige as much as I think she could’ve done much better.

While I thoroughly enjoy Paige as a performer, LOL if you think the WWE isn’t going to continue to shit all over the divas division outside of Total Divas. They care less about the Divas than they do the tag division on most nights.

Surprised that this hasn’t gotten more traction, and if ANYBODY but Paige had pulled that last night I’m sure Brandon would have said it…but didn’t AJ deserve better?

She has oscillated over the last year or so from the most dynamic character on RAW to the most interesting Divas Champion ever. I thought the WrestleMania match was perfect (save for the horrible post-streak spot) in that it cemented her as a top heel, made her look strong, and made the chase for the title something that mattered again (which hadn’t been the case for a LONG time in that division). I love Paige, but last night did the exact opposite for the Divas title. Wouldn’t the ascent of a new wrestler/champion mean more if there was some struggle? Wasn’t that a huge missed opportunity to make a heel look more evil, a face look more sympathetic, and a title chase look more important?

Again, I love the rise of a new diva, particularly Paige, who should just kick ass moving forward, but I thought that dumping the most interesting diva’s most interesting reign to the side like that was kind of lame, and more similar to “par for the WWE course” than it was “BIG NEW MOMENT”.

I’ve been an AJ mark for a minute now, though, so obviously I’m biased.

You have to look at it from the right angle. Paige didn’t come out to fight for the title; she is the queen in NXT and didn’t plan to leave it yet (in kayfabe). She took an oppurtunity, caught AJ off-guard (which would’ve worked better off a good Paige Turner), and capitalized. This is page one of the story, though.

This is a miracle and, as AJ will soon put it, a fluke. Now AJ gets to go super crazy AJ heel again as she chases for her title, putting Paige on the defensive and forcing her to step up her game and prove she can hang with the “real” divas (ignoring the fact that those real divas suck at wrestling).

Love AJ. But I like how this went down. She beat EVERY Diva at WM. She comes out the confident heel and takes the new girl lightly and paid the price. And it’s more than this initial moment. It’s the ongoing feud. What’s the last AJ feud you were excited about?

AJ AND Paige deserved better. That crowd was screaming THIS IS AWESOME when they were about to throw down. They deserved more than a fluke win in two minutes. There was room to give those two 10 minutes to blow up the house, which would have been the best stage to demonstrate just how good Paige and AJ really are, and how great women’s wrestling can be when given time and space.

AJ losing the title like that is such garbage…I just can’t even. I don’t mind a fluke win by the newbie, but there is no way your 300 day champ should drop the title in a WM9 Fuji/Hogan/Yoko angle. Just awful.

They absolutely did not dump AJ’s reign to side, AJ played it up the entire time before Paige came out. Even Paige was all “b-b-but I’m just here to congratulate you, AJ pls” before their match. Her longterm reign added to the gravity of the upset, and it will no doubt be used again going forward with AJ potentially becoming a raging mess over the fact that she got careless and let a newbie take it away from her.

The entire point here is that Paige pulled out a HUGE upset on the Iron Woman of the division in a quick shocker, and it’s going to lead to an actually interesting storyline for WWE women’s wrestling between two ladies that can actually wrestle. AJ bias or not, this is 100% a good thing. Unless of course you would prefer that they go back to the “Total Divas” basically pushing AJ’s shit in constantly except for when the title is on the line? I sure don’t.

@Stupendous Silver Hard-on

Giving AJ/Paige more time would have devalued the upset. The entire point here is that AJ grossly underestimated Paige, and Paige caught her. If the match lasts longer, it turns into “Why can’t the champ take down this rookie that wasn’t even ready for a title match?” which is far less interesting.

Do you think the Shield showed up to help Daniel Bryan because he was getting screwed over by The Authority and they’re the “Hounds of Justice” or did they show up to fight The Authority because they’re sick of getting bossed around by HHH/Steph/Kane and didn’t want to be their lapdogs anymore.

I hope that they’re not completely buddy-buddies with Bryan right off the bat, but WWE is usually bad at portraying “former bitter rivals who still don’t get along now teaming for mutual benefaction” so we get things like Punk and Rey hugging after winning a tag match. I hope they don’t do this again, but it’s happened 999/1000 of the past times.

In my terrible fantasy-booking dreams, I had hoped they would work in something about how D-Bry used his merchandising bonus from the “shirts that HHH made for him” (to quote Stephanie) and hire the Shield as mercenaries to protect him.

Damien Sandow’s in the ring when all of a sudden RybAxel come out and just go to beat the crap out of Sandow when all of a sudden.
“SPOTLIGHT, PLEASE” Aiden English comes out and just enters the ring and beats up Axel whilst singing a song because PFFFTTT… Axel then Sandow and English hit both of their finishers on Ryback at the same time then they do an Encore.

In the Raw general discussion thread, somebody said they were having a hard time buying that The Shield were taking action for anyone other than themselves. Here, Brandon makes a minor mistake, when he assumes The Shield gets into it with the authority over Daniel Bryan. Remember, earlier in the show Kane accidentally lets it slip that Triple H gave the attack order on the Shield a few weeks back; that’s why they stepped in.

Again, it’s a really minor distinction, but it’s probably in better keeping with The Shield’s characters.

Ponies are not baby horses. They’re a number of different breeds. Still horses, but if your regular horse is a Labrador, then a pony is a Terrier. And draft horses would be Saint Bernards, and miniature horses (yes, even smaller than ponies) would be Chihuahuas. Just talking size comparisons. There are multiple breeds within each of those general sizes. Baby horses are foals, with colts or fillies as titles for the sexes.

If there’s a shirt coming with a giant picture of the saddest crying child on the front with Bork and Paul’s faces devilishly grinning in the background and it says “PUTTING TEARS IN THE EYES OF CHILDREN SINCE 2000” I will throw all of my money at it.

People have been trying to get “John Cena suuuucks” to be a go-to thing for his entrance for years and while I love that the post-Mania crowd brought it back in full force, the average WWE crowd isn’t clever enough to keep it going.

This post-‘Mania crowd wasn’t as hot as it’s been in recent years, but don’t let it detriment that they were still fucking awesome, as expected. The Wyatt match was brilliant, and I’m still #1 in line for believing that tiiiime is on their side.

As someone who lived it, I can vouch for the fact that Wrestlemania XXX was a far more emotionally taxing event than the last 2 Wrestelmanias where the “Post Mania Raw crowd” legend began. By the end of Mania WWE had taken every bit of emotion we all brought with us in the best possible way. I’m STILL exhausted.

I actually liked this year’s crowd way more than the last few. Part of it is probably because of how great Mania was, there wasn’t much for them to complain about or try to hijack or whatever. Secondly, it’s the smarkest of the smarkest, so maybe they’ve have seen and heard and read how it effects other crowds when they act like attention-seeking dipshits and policed themselves a little better. After the last two shows I’m ready to believe anything good is possible.

@85 I too liked this one better than the past ones. The post Mania crowd always goes to have fun instead of trying to grab attention or whatever, and while they’ve had fun last night, it was a lot more thanks to WWE putting on an actually great show rather than just “these matches suck, let’s do something interesting /olé chant”, which ended up even better in my opinion. “John Cena suuuuucks!” in his own theme songs melody, singing along to Real Americans theme, treating Barrett like a god, giving Paige a proper main roster welcome, giving a vocal group hug to Bryan, turning Heyman face/heel in the same night, basically EVERYTHING was there.

The crowd wasn’t as crazy this year, but the Raw was actually better. Really, last years Raw outside of Ziggler cashing in, and teasing a Taker/Team Hell no vs. Shield, it was awful. The crowd made it fun.

Last night was just full of epicness in the ring and in storytelling, and it was mixed with a great crowd.

If it does, I kinda wish the Shield would try to trick them by pretending to not get along again because they were put in a triple threat against each other and they want to start their individual careers now or something, but then when Evolution 2.0 swoops in for the kill, oops, Shield not really mad at each other or anything, just one step ahead of you.

Of course, that would still warrant the Authority to stand above Bryan and The Shield in one way or the other in the following weeks, so it will be interesting to see how they one-up each other… so many things to look forward to!

There’s speculation that he fulfilled all of his contractually obligated appearances, which is why WWE hasn’t sued him for breach of contract (so far). But really, we don’t that, and we don’t know that injury and burn-out were the reasons he left. All we know is that he left.

On the other hand, I can’t agree with Brandon’s point of view since I don’t know enough to feel like Punk “abandoned” us or that he owes me anything.

Whether or not it was a subtle “fuck you” to CM Punk from WWE brass who cares? We got an awesome show, and honestly? I don’t miss CM Punk. I don’t miss his shitty elbow drops, I don’t miss him mailing it in every week, and now, hopefully, people realize we shouldn’t even give a shit about CM Punk. Would him being on the ‘mania card really have made a difference with what we got as fans this weekend? My thinking is that no, it wouldn’t have made a difference.

My problem with CM Punk is that I really believe he’s fallen the way of Bret Hart and sometimes Mick Foley; buying into their own hype too much. CM Punk was right, the WWE doesn’t need CM Punk and it’s going to continue without him. So if you want to go to WWE shows and chant CM Punk, go ahead. I’m gonna be the guy yelling “NO!” at you, because CM Punk, to me, doesn’t look like he has much of a place in WWE right now, and I’m 100% content with that.

If he comes back as a heel where does he fit? Corporate Punk? That’s lame to me. Batista, Orton and Triple H naturally fit – hell if you want to expand that group put Sheamus in there, he’s not doing anything and a heel run as one of Triple H’s buddies could be a good spot for him, and it naturally fits. Shoehorning something in simply for shock value is stupid, and how can he come back as a face? The Shield and Daniel Bryan, and to some degree, Cesaro, are the most over faces in the company right now. They’re the guys at the top of the card, and they’ve worked their asses off to earn that spot. Since Punk lost the championship his work has been awful, save for his match with Lesnar at Summerslam. Using The Evolution of Authority to get these guys even more over is great booking, and I really can’t find a place for CM Punk in the mix. Sure, he had beef with Triple H a few years ago, but that feels like decades ago with how Wrestlemania and Raw played out.

I’m with Brandon – let Punk go to as many baseball stadiums as his heart desires and he can look bothered in as many fan photos as he’s wont to take..enjoy your retirement.

With DoctorCAW on this. All I know about CM Punk is that I enjoyed little of his work after the loss to Lesnar (some of The Shield stuff, that’s it). If CM Punk comes back bringing the same quality that gave us the Jeff Hardy feud, The SES, Summer of Punk II, even New Nexus or Heel Champ, I’ll cheer. Anything else, enjoy retirement (really).

I’m literally fantasizing right now about Bryan and Rollins trading suicide dives back and forth over and over. Like BAM SUICIDE DIVE and then the guy that just got got just shrugs it off, gets back in the ring and does one of his own. Back and forth. Like five times until one of them finally gets the better of the exchange.

Last night was the first time I ever commented on here after months of lurking and reading up on these columns. I’ve been on and off with the ‘E but Brandon has helped me keep up with everything for the most part as priorities in this thing we call “life” have come into play. After WM XXX and last night’s RAW, the ‘E has now ascended as a priority. If THIS is what HHH’s vision of what the future holds…I’ll be doing my damnedest to tune in every week, even if things start to get cruel again. I also be doing my best to join you guys on these threads as well. Y’all were awesome last night!!!!

As awesome as Raw was last night, I could not stop making comments about the “Crow Sting” guy moping in the front row. An electric show and an electric crowd, and that dude kept that sad face going the ENTIRE show. That’s dedication. I found the entire thing both sad and incredible to watch.

I didn’t keep an eye on Sting Guy. But it’s kinda funny seeing the pics here. He was probably all sad thinking “Who are all these new guys?? Where’s Ronnie Garvin and Sting and Disco Inferno? This sucks!”

That guy is my jam now. You know he was so sure that Sting was showing up he paid a crapton for that ticket, spend hours getting that facepaint right, told the person next to him “Sting is FOR SURE showing up tonight” and before the show went on air somebody showed him Sting’s son’s tweet from the Final Four with Stinger in the photo. Dude spent the rest of the show reevaluating so much…

I love Paige’s tearful speech in that backstage video, but I’m super angry at her for not responding to the Total Divas hugs with punches (especially Summer Rae).

I’m (botch aside (though good sell)) very happy with the way the match with AJ went. AJ was being a cocky piece-of-shit to Paige, calling her scrumpet like she’s a little kid and “below” AJ. All AJ’s done for months was barely be able to beat members of the Total Divas cast, it made her soft, Paige was real competition and AJ got got. I can’t wait to see the feud play out (hopefully for months on end).

Here’s hoping for Wade that his post-Wrestlemania popularity is more like that guy from XXVIII than that guy from XXIX.

I feel sorry that Big E. did his best work in months to get the audience to like him and they were having none of it cause he was on the wrong team. THANKS CENA!

I hope Heyman stipulates that the winner of Cesaro/Swagger gets to keep Patriot as his theme, then Cesaro dumps it anyway for C’est Un Miracle.

I’m not an expert at illegal feeds, but I managed to catch ArRival and the AJ-Natalya match on Main Event via a link provided in the discussion threads of those particular shows on ‘squared circle’ on Reddit.

It totally fits his character. He’s getting over the exact same way Bryan did, by being an incredible professional wrestler and forcing WWE to push him because everyone already loves him for being an incredible professional wrestler.

I don’t say this enough, but thanks Brandon for enhancing my experience as a wrestling fan by making there write ups and giving us a forum to discuss wrestling with people who’s only response isn’t “Cena ghey”.

This is why I’ve been saying that Wrestlebros need a message board where we can hang out and talk wrestling and TV and real life stuff with each other when there isn’t an active thread going on here(AND ALWAYS COME BACK HERE WHEN THERE IS SO BRANDON GETS THE PAGEVIEWS HE DESERVES!!!). We’d just need decent moderation to keep the dillholes out, but I’ve seen it done on plenty of non-wrestling boards before. Then we could all be Wrestlebros 24/7 together for ever and ever!

At the end of Mania I didn’t yell or scream at getting what I wanted most, it felt like catharsis more than anything. Last night I got multiple moments of visual glee from the Bo and Rose vignettes, compounded by legitimate freaking out when Paige’s music hit. I don’t even mind the botched spot because literally every other thing about that debut was awesome, and I know it’s just the start.